Merely Business

Kissing a Brick Wall

When Ginny returned to the living room from the kitchen, Harry and Hermione were holding hands as they spoke with Luna Lovegood. She rolled her eyes angrily and looked for her own date. She spotted Draco standing by the refreshment table still, eating a cheese and cracker sandwich.

'Is she angry?' Draco asked as Ginny approached him.

'Furious, actually,' Ginny said, though she couldn't hide her disappointment at the out come of their row.

'And yet you sound as though things didn't go as you had hoped,' Draco noted.

'Not even close,' Ginny groaned. 'She discovered the full intentions of my plan and shot them down. And, if that wasn't bad enough, she told me that I have to tell Harry that I'm bringing you to their wedding.'

'Then, let's go!' Draco said cheerfully, grabbing Ginny's arm and leading her in Harry and Hermione's general direction.

'No! Draco! No!' Ginny whimpered as if he were hurting her.

'Yes,' Draco said in a low voice. 'We need to get this over with. I thought you wanted to make him jealous.'

Ginny bit her lip. She hadn't wanted it to come down to admitting what was burning in her heart, but she had to tell him. 'You don't understand,' she said loudly. ' I can't do this. Not yet. I still lo--'

But her words were silenced by a pair of lips against hers. Her eyes snapped wide open to see whose lips were smashed against her own, and found that it was just as she had suspected: Draco.

Just as she was about to push him away and hex him into the twenty-second century, Draco was pulled away rather rudely by George, who was shouting, 'Don't you ever put your lips or any other parts of you anatomy on my sister ever again!' He held the neck of Draco's shirt--or rather, his own shirt that Draco happened to be wearing--daring to punch him.

'George! Let go of him!' Ginny shrieked impulsively. He was ruining her plan more than it was already. But George wasn't listening. He dragged Draco out on the flat into the hallway, where the stairs were that led down to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Ginny followed only because she feared that if she didn't she would find Draco dead in a matter of minutes. Once outside the flat, Ginny closed the door, and George was yelling again.

'That's my sister you were kissing!' he shouted as he pushed Draco up against the brick wall.

'George Weasley, let go of him,' Ginny said sternly, trying to sound like her mother.

'No way, Gin,' George said, balling his hand up into a fist, prepared to punch Draco in the face. 'Not until I kick his--'

But what part of Draco George had planned on kicking was never determined. Ginny's anger was out of control once more. She whipped her wand from her pocket and almost immediately, a jet of scarlet light shot out at George, causing him to fly across the corridor into the other brick wall. Draco slumped to the ground, breathing heavily.

'Are you all right?' Ginny asked.

'No,' George grunted, rubbing his back in pain.

'I wasn't talking to you, you prat,' Ginny snapped before turning to Draco. 'Are you all right?'

Draco nodded, his breathing returning to normal. Ginny turned to George once more. 'Go back inside and tend to your guests.'

'But he--'

'He is my problem, not yours.' Ginny stared at George until he finally returned to the flat with a hand on his back in pain.

'Thanks,' Draco said, slowly getting to his feet.

Ginny quickly spun around to face him. She held her wand up to his face, and he backed up against the wall, eyeing the end of her wand nervously. 'I only kept George from cursing you because I want to do it myself.'

'Wha--?'

'How dare you kiss me?' Ginny prodded him in the chest with the tip of her wand rather than cursing him.

'You were about to declare your undying love to Harry Potter in the middle of a Valentine's Day party that you were attending with me as your date!' Draco argued. 'You could've blown everything!'

'You could've given me syphilis! Who knows where your mouth has been!' She jabbed him with her wand once more.

'You seem to be under the impression that I actually wanted to kiss you,' Draco said, rubbing his chest. 'I felt like I was kissing a brick wall.'

'Yes, but we never agreed on kissing!' Ginny said, hoping to have the last word and get past her terrible first kiss with Draco Malfoy.

'We wouldn't have needed an intervention like that if you had kept your mouth shut!'

Ginny sighed, admitting defeat. Draco was right. If she had just shut up to start with she wouldn't have ended up anywhere near his lips. And what was he supposed to do? Cover her mouth and drag her out into the hallway? That would have only ended with Draco murdered at the hand of Hermione, Harry, George, or Fred.

'All right, can we just agree to keep the kissing at a bare minimum?' Ginny offered.

'If it will keep your insane brothers from killing me, then yes,' Draco said.

Ginny smirked. If that were what it would take to make Draco Malfoy nervous, Ginny would have tried it much sooner. 'Now, we need to go back in there and make this look real.'

'That means telling Potter that you're bringing me to his wedding,' Draco pointed out.

'And that means a lot of hand-holding and gazing longingly into each other's eyes,' Ginny added.

'I suppose I can do that,' Draco said. 'I'll just have to pretend you're Pansy,' he added teasingly.

How Draco could compare her to that cow was beyond Ginny, but she nodded. For some reason she felt she didn't really need to pretend Draco wasn't anyone else. She was finding that gazing at him wasn't all that difficult.

Draco took her hand, and Ginny was jerked back to reality. 'You ready?' he asked.

Ginny nodded, trying to get the annoying twit inside her head to stop identifying all of his assets, including the way his lip curled up when he was teasing her.

'Yes,' Ginny said firmly, blocking out the voice. But the voice continued to tell her how warm his hand felt beneath hers.